“You certainly will have to do so. Andy shall drive you into town to-night, and I could find it in my heart to wish that I might never see your face again.”
“Very well.” Hervey laughed harshly. “As you wish. I accept your commands. See you as readily fulfil your part of the contract when the time comes. You do not hoodwink me again with impunity.”
And so brother and sister parted. The girl walked on to the house, her feet dragging wearily over the dusty trail. Hervey paused irresolutely. His burning eyes, filled with a look of bitter hatred, gazed after the slight figure of his sister, whose life he had so 267 wantonly helped to wreck. Then he laughed cruelly and turned abruptly back on his tracks and returned once more to the harvesters.
Prudence gained the house and went straight to her room. She wanted to be alone. She wanted to straighten out the chaos of her thoughts. She heard the cheery voices of her mother and Alice talking in the kitchen. She heard the clatter of plates and dishes, and she knew that these two were washing up. But beyond that she noticed nothing; she did not even see the plump figure of Sarah Gurridge approaching the house from the direction of Leonville.
Once in her own little room she flung herself into an arm-chair and sat staring straight in front of her. Her paramount feeling was one of awful horror. The mystery was solved, and George Iredale was the murderer. The metal alarm clock ticked away upon the wooden top of her bureau, and the sound pervaded the room with its steady throb. Her feelings, her thoughts, seemed to pulsate in concert with its rhythm. The words which expressed her dominant emotions hammered themselves into her brain with the steady precision of the ticking––
“George Iredale, the murderer of Leslie Grey!”
The moments passed, but time brought the girl no relief. All thought of the man who had told her of this thing had passed from her. Only the fact remained. Slowly, as she sat with nerves tingling and whirling brain, a flush of blood mounted to her head, her brain became hot, and she seemed to be looking out on a red world. The ticking of the clock grew fainter and more distant. The room seemed to diminish in size, while the objects about her drew 268 nearer and nearer. A sense of compression was hers, although she seemed to be gazing out over some great distance with everything around her in due perspective.
Mechanically she rose and opened the window; then she returned to her chair with something of the action of an automaton.
And as she sat the blood seemed to recede from her brain and an icy dew broke out upon her forehead. She was numbed with a sort of paralysis now, and the measured beat of the clock no longer pounded out the words of her thought. Only her heart beat painfully, and she was conscious of a horrible void. Something was wrong with her, but she was incapable of realizing what it was.
She moved, the chair creaked under her, and again thought flowed through her brain. It came with a rush; the deadly numbness had gone as quickly as it had come, and once more her faculties worked feverishly. Now she realized pain, horror, despair, hopelessness in a sudden, overwhelming flood. She shrank back deeper into the chair as though to avoid physical blows which were being rained upon her by some unseen hand.